Pingus 0.7.2 crashes on startup

Hi there is a minor font related bug in Pingus. When you start Pingus with the Turkish locale is selected it crashes and gives an error message like this:

$ pingus
Welcome to Pingus 0.7.2!
========================
data path: /usr/games/../share/games/pingus/data/
language: Turkish (tr)
font encoding: iso-8859-9
sound support: enabled
music support: enabled
resolution: 800x600
fullscreen: disabled

SavegameManager: Parser problem: Couldn't open file '/home/battal/.pingus/savegames/savegames.scm'.
Font: datadir://images/fonts/courier_small-iso-8859-9.png
  Error: glyphs found: 188, expected 189
  Format: bpp: 32
  Size: 2640x16
IMG: datadir://images/fonts/verdana11-iso-8859-0.png
pingus: src/font.cpp:72: FontImpl::FontImpl(const FontDescription&): Assertion `surface' failed.

I recognised that was a font related issue. And after opening font file I found the source of the problem.

$ sudo nano /usr/share/games/pingus/data/images/fonts/verdana11-iso-8859-9.font

To solve the issue I edited verdana11-iso-8859-9.font file like this:

 (image "images/fonts/verdana11-iso-8859-9.png"))

Because Turkish language uses two encodings iso-8859-9 or UTF-8 encoding.

Also I would like to translate Pingus using UTF-8 encoding. Because UTF-8 is less problematic. And tr_TR.UTF-8 locale has an extensive usage. What should I do? Does pingus support UTF-8?

I'd be glad if you may also change the pingus data files accordingly as I mentioned.

Thanks ..

Erdem